New York Dead (Stone Barrington 1)

When the day shift came on, Lieutenant Leary called a meeting and brought the new group up to date.

“Okay, now you know everything we know,” he said to the four assembled teams. “The press knows about the dive, because this guy Scoop What’s-his-name?-”

“Berman,” Stone said.

“-Berman shows up and gets his tape. They don’t seem to know that the lady hasn’t been seen since, and I want to keep it that way as long as possible. This is Barrington and Bacchetti’s case, reporting directly to me. Barrington, Bacchetti, go sleep. I don’t want you back here before noon. The rest of you, check on every private clinic, every doctor’s office in the five boroughs, if you have to. Check Jersey and Westchester, too. On Long Island, just check the fancy private clinics. I want this woman found this morning, dead or alive. When you find her, Stone and Bacchetti get the interview, unless it’s deathbed stuff. Nobody, but nobody says a word to the press except me, for the moment. I don’t have to tell you what this celebrity shit is like. The mayor’ll be on the phone as soon as he wakes up, and he’ll want to know. I’ll ask him to buy us a few hours to find the woman.”

As the detectives shuffled out, Leary called Stone and Dino back. “ Barrington, I’m assuming you’re up to this. You’re still on limited duty, officially.”

“I’m up to it, Lieutenant.”

“I mean it about the sleep,” Leary said. “You grab four or five hours. This one ain’t likely to be over today, and I want you in shape to fuckin’ handle it.”

“Yessir,” they replied in unison.

Stone limped up the steps of the Turtle Bay brownstone, retrieved the Times from the stoop, and let himself in. He was met by the combined scent of decay and fresh wood shavings. No messages on the answering machine in the downstairs hallway. Too tired and sore to take the stairs, he took the elevator to the third floor. It creaked a lot, but it made it.

His bedroom looked ridiculous. An ordinary double bed stood against a wall, with only a television set, an exercise machine, an old chest of drawers, and a chair to help fill the enormous room. He switched on the television and started to undress.

“Television journalist Sasha Nijinsky last night fell from the terrace of her twelfth-floor East Side penthouse. An off-duty police detective who was at the scene gave chase to someone who had apparently been in Ms. Nijinsky’s apartment, but was, himself, injured and lost the possible perpetrator. Astonishingly, Ms. Nijinsky may have survived the fall. She was taken to a Manhattan hospital, and we have had no further word on her condition. We’ll keep you posted as news comes in.”

“You’re guessing about the Manhattan hospital, sport,” Stone said to the newscaster. “That was my guess, too.”

He stripped off his clothes and stretched out on the bed, switching the channel to The Morning Show.

“Sasha Nijinsky has done just about everything in broadcast journalism, and she’s done it fast,” a pleasant young man was saying. They cut to a montage of shots from Nijinsky’s career, and he continued, voice-over.

“Daughter of the Russian novelist Georgi Nijinsky, who was expelled from the Soviet Union more than twenty-five years ago, Sasha was six years old when she came to this country with her parents. She already spoke fluent English.” There were shots of a bearded man descending from an airplane, a surprised-looking little girl in his arms.

“Sasha distinguished herself as an actress at Yale, but not as a student. Then, on graduation, instead of pursuing a career in the theater, as expected, she took a job as a reporter on a New Haven station. Four years later, she came to New York and earned a reputation as an ace reporter on the Continental Network affiliate. She spent another three years here, on The Morning Show, where she honed her interviewing skills, then she was sent to Moscow as the network’s correspondent in the Soviet Union for a year, before being expelled in the midst of spy charges that she has always maintained were fabricated.”

“On returning to this country, she further enhanced her growing reputation, covering both national political conventions before the last election. Then her Sunday morning interview show, Newsmakers, pitted her against the nation’s top political figures. She proved to be as tough as ever in those interviews, and it was said in Washington that nobody wanted to go on her show, but everyone was afraid not to.

“Earlier this month, the industry was not surprised when it was announced that Sasha Nijinsky would join anchorman Barron Harkness as co-anchor on the network’s evening news, which, although still the leading network newscast, had recently slipped in the ratings. Harkness, an old colleague of Sasha’s on The Morning Show, could not be reached for comment, as he is not due back until today from assignment in the Middle East.”

Stone switched off the set. Make a note to talk to Harkness, he told himself, then he put the case from his mind. He thought, as he always did when he wanted to clear his head, about the house and his plans for it. It was in terrible condition.

He turned his thoughts to plumbing fixtures. In minutes, he was asleep.

Chapter 5

Stone arrived at the station house at one o’clock sharp. The squad room was abuzz with detectives on the phone. He raised his eyebrows at one, and the man gave a huge shrug. A moment later, he hung up.

“Gather round,” Stone said to the group. “Any luck?” he asked when they had assembled.

“Zilch. She’s nowhere,” a detective said.

“How many more places to check?” Stone asked.

“Not many.”

“Add all the funeral parlors in the city to your list,” Stone said. “Start with the ones in Manhattan. What else we got?”

“We got a suspect,” Detective Gonzales said. He referred to a sheet of paper. “One Marvin Herbert Van Fleet, male Caucasian, forty-one, of a SoHo address.”

“What makes him a suspect?” Stone asked.

“He’s written Sasha Nijinsky over a thousand letters the past two years.” Gonzales held up a stack of paper.